All of Bharat’s anger and doubts died down the moment the words appeared before him. Just a few seconds ago, he was, essentially ‘ranting’ to Xenakieth but he couldn’t deny what was in front of him anymore. He could probably still argue that the words in front of him surrounded by a blue box weren’t real, as hologram tech was a thing.

’Or maybe I should accept that this isn’t some prank or dream anymore’ he thought to himself. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny the anticipation he felt as he thought about what it would mean for his future life. The thought of flying in the sky like a superhero or shooting fire from his hands filled him with childish joy he hasn’t felt since he was in school.

After all, what person who grew up watching superhero films and reading a shit-ton of fantasy books hasn’t imagined himself doing all that cool stuff.

Xenakieth, on the other hand, seeing the dazed look on Bharat's face was confused for a second before a look of realization crossed her face when she guessed what must have happened.

“So, do you believe me now Bharat?”, she asked. The blatant ‘I told you so’ clear in her tone even if she didn’t say it outright to his face. Which he was grateful for, as he was now feeling embarrassed about losing his temper before.

But in his defence, anyone will be sceptical at first if they are suddenly told that their life was going to become like an RPG game character.

“Y-yeah, I believe you now. So, how does this work?”, Bharat responded dazedly and now very willing to listen to her explanation.

“Well, first, try to do what you did earlier. You might get different results now. And try not to say it out loud will you. It’s a part of you now, so just think it in your mind with conviction and it shall be done.”

Bharat nodded at her and tried to do what she said.

‘Status’

Status

Name: Bharat Kumar

Race: Human (Tier 0) (Level 0)

Level: 0

Titles: [Pioneer of World]

Health: 111/111

Mana: 93/93

Stamina: 75/75

‘Stats’

Stats

+Strength: 13

+Perception: 10

+Endurance: 11

+Constitution: 8

+Intelligence: 10

+Agility: 7

+Luck: 0

Unspent Points: 5

‘Wow. This is… good? I have no clue. So, what was next?’

‘Skills’

Abilities:

General:

[Basic Translate (Common)]

Three separate boxes like the previous ones, Blue with white text inside them appeared in front of him. On the left one, his name, race, age, etc was shown. On the central screen were his ‘stats’ displayed. On the right one were his skills.

Level, Health, and Stamina were self-explanatory. Mana probably meant magic so that was real, something his inner child got very excited about. Titles, he had no clue. It could be a lot of things, it could be powerful or could be useless, he’ll have to ask that.

Looking at his stats, he could see a small ‘plus’ sign beside the name of every stat. He was pretty sure what most of them meant but he decided to look anyway. He raised his hand and touched the first one.

His skill menu was empty except for one skill, which he guessed was the reason he was able to converse in English with an alien.

- Strength: 13

<< How Strong are you. Explore for more functions. >>

‘Well, that was detailed’, he sarcastically thought, a bit miffed about that short explanation. ‘And what is with that last line?’

Trying the next one, he got similar results.

- Perception: 10

<< How perceptive are you. Explore for more functions. >>

And then the next one too.

- Endurance: 11

<< How much can your body endure. Explore for more functions. >>

A bit more than previous ones, but still lacking any real facts. Trying the rest of them, he got similarly disappointing results. With the same message at the end for each one, ‘Explore for more functions’.

“What does it mean by ‘Tier 0’?”, Bharat asked Xenakieth after looking at the boxes in front of him while pointing at the ‘Tier 0’ mentioned in the race. She looked questionably at him after looking at where he was pointing, so, assuming only he could see his status, he explained what he saw.

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“It means what I just said about your race. Weak and squishy”

Now it was his turn to be confused. Was it a metric or something that describes a race strength?

“Can you tell me more about it?”, he asked curiously.

“I…can’t actually. This is something you’ll know when the time is right but for now, I really can’t provide a detailed explanation to you.”

“Why can’t you tell me in detail? You told me yourself that you are to help guide me, right?” Bharat asked in confusion.

“Because there are certain rules that prevent the disclosure of secrets to civilizations that have recently joined the nexus as a whole. The whole idea is about the civilization exploring secrets and grow with their own power. So, I can’t tell you af#fd &$%k dh^94/# fdg/-fg*…” Xenakieth explained to him. But by the end, her words sounded more gibberish than actual words. Then he realized the issue.

‘So, it seems the system prevents things like meta-gaming ', he thought in realization.

It looked like he’ll have to find things out on his own if this was the case. More info about his stats were things he’ll probably have to figure out himself. The system itself said ‘Explore for more’. It wouldn’t be exploring if he could get all the answers from someone.

“So, what’s next?”

“As I told you earlier, your world is going through some changes, changes that will take some time which will make your world more resourceful but much more dangerous as well. Opportunity and risk come hand in hand as they say.”

“So, in that period, all inhabitants of your world will undergo training, to get used to your new situation, and to not get killed instantly by the very environment. For this purpose, you, with your respective zones will be sent to different locations with certain objectives. When you complete that objective, you’ll be considered capable enough and sent back to your world.”

Now Xenakieth came to the annoying part, for her at least. Normally at this point, their meeting would end, and Bharat would go to whatever world was chosen for him and undergo the ‘Training’. After that, whatever happens, would be the responsibility of others. This is the main reason she chose this position when her team was offered this ‘job’.

Sure, in comparison her task was a bit lacklustre and boring, but she doesn’t mind much. Also, the fact that she could have some fun messing around with these ‘newbies’ was a nice bonus too. The problem was the circumstances in which Bharat arrived here.

When he told her the situation he was in before being transported here she was shocked and confused. One reason was of course because that wasn’t what supposed to happen as far as she was aware, but the other reason was that the moment Bharat completed his account of events, she got a notification.

A Quest notification.

*Ding*

<< Quest Received >>

<< Title: Apology and Compensation

Description: Due to the actions of some operators, the procedure for world reconstruction was mismanaged resulting in loss of lives and reputation, which can’t be ignored. Recompense the victim as an apology.

Objective: provide compensation so that the victim is satisfied.

Reward for Success: Main quest rating upgraded by one grade.

Failure: Main quest rating degraded by one grade. >>

This was the quest she received. Now, it wasn’t all so bad. In fact, even she felt a bit sorry for this guy who got screwed over because of someone else’s mistake.

But all that pity was thrown out the moment she realized that the compensation it spoke of had to come out of her own pockets. Now, realistically, that quest would have gone to Bharat himself as a direct apology, but as the assimilation process was still underway, that task fell to her, his manager.

Before she could bemoan about it anymore though, she took one look at the clueless face of Bharat, and a wicked idea formed in her mind. After all, he just had to be satisfied, and she had to at least try to be generous. She just had to bullshit a little bit.

“Then, normally, I would be sending you off now and we’ll probably never meet again, but your situation is a bit special.”

She told him that, due to the mistake that was responsible for his almost death, he would be compensated. Obviously, she decided to omit the part where the quest was basically forcing her to do so.

Bharat was torn about how to feel about that. On one hand, he didn’t like the fact he was almost a goner due to a managing mistake, but now he was being compensated for that. So, he decided to forget that and move on with some hesitation. It all worked out in the end anyway.

When Bharat nodded, Xenakieth, while carefully controlling her expressions to not to give herself away, waved her hand and 9 black boxes with a question mark appeared floating in front of Bharat.

“You can choose any one of these. All of them contain things that will be very helpful in your future endeavours”, she said with a straight face.

‘A Lucky Draw? What the actual fuck? Aren’t they taking this game thing too seriously in their concepts? First, there were rules against something like meta-gaming and now a lucky draw?’, Bharat wondered to himself. Looking at Xenakieth face, he saw she was completely serious.

Looking at the hesitant face of Bharat, Xenakieth fought down her snicker. She couldn’t give herself away now. That quest wasn’t looking too bad anymore. And she would get herself a free rating upgrade too. A part of wondered if every next person will provide a similar quest like this one but she doubted that would happen. Her main quest would have no purpose then.

On the other hand, Bharat was in a dilemma. 9 mysterious items were in front of him, and he had to choose one. This reminded him of the cheap online games he played. The only thing that was missing was a way to buy more attempts using real-time money.

Now, he could choose any box blindly, but his intuition told him he would regret that later. In those games too, only one or two rewards were worth something, the rest all were pretty much useless. He could rely on his luck, but past experiences were proof enough that his luck was horribly bad.

If anything involved something like luck to win, he was bound to lose. So, he wouldn’t bet on his luck getting him something useful. In fact, he was all but guaranteed to get the most useless thing of the bunch.

‘Wait. Luck…Luck!’

Then he had a brilliant idea that might just bore fruit, and get some questions answered at the same time. So, he opened his stats page and added some points into his luck stat.

- Luck: 2

<< How Lucky are you. Explore for more functions. >>

His first thought was to only add one point but then he remembered exactly whose luck he was considering. One point won’t change shit, so he added one more just to be sure.

Now, a little more confident, he randomly chose one of the boxes floating in front of him. The next moment, Xenakieth waved her hand making the rest of the boxes disappear. And was that a smirk he saw on her face?

Nah. Maybe he was imagining things.

Looking at the box in his hand, he gulped and opened the lid. Inside he saw a purple-coloured cylindrical object, that on closer inspection revealed itself to be a small scroll with black edges. Now he wasn’t sure if it was the case in this system, but ‘Purple’ normally meant rare.

When Xenakieth saw what Bharat had gotten from this ‘Lucky Draw’. Her eye starting twitched madly, as that was arguably the best thing that was among all of them, but she controlled herself.

Not like anything could be done at this point, as she already got her quest completion notification.

“Is it any good?” Bharat asked, clueless about the rarity of items in this new system as that was the first item he has seen.

“I can’t tell you.”, she said with gritted teeth, lying with a straight face, too annoyed to talk anymore and just wanting to get this over with.

The question itself was completely normal for him to ask but considering the situation, she felt like he was mocking her.

“Now, all that’s taken care of, off you go” she shooed him off and banished him off to the place which was picked up for his ‘training’.

“Wait, wait. What abou-” and that was as far as he got before getting transported, once again to an unknown location.

‘*sigh* I should have brought out a less rare one, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway as anything is gold for that newbie at this point. But noo, I had to put that one. That lucky bastard.’ Xenakieth thought in annoyance when Bharat vanished from the room.

She then opened her interface and focused on bringing out info about the next person. But she was surprised when she got to the next screen, which was followed by another fit of laughter, one that was far louder than the last one.

Not that anyone was there to hear it.